Chapter 37: Freddy Starts Looking for Help

Chapter 37: Chapter 37: Freddy Starts Looking for Help

Chapter 37: Freddy Starts Looking for Help

Early the next morning, Glen Lantz was the first person in the cabin to wake. He rubbed his eyes, sat up slowly, and realized the crushing exhaustion and fear that had haunted him for days were almost completely gone. His mind felt clearer than it had in a week, although his stomach was so full that he felt as if he had swallowed an entire swimming pool.

Glen looked down at his slightly swollen stomach with a confused expression. "Guys, I think something’s wrong with—" Before he could finish, a massive burp escaped him, and he immediately covered his mouth as if afraid water might come back up. The noise woke Nancy Thompson, who sat up with the same bewildered expression before suddenly realizing something important.

"I didn’t dream about him," Nancy whispered. She touched her face and looked around the cabin as though expecting Freddy to emerge from a shadow. "I actually slept, and Freddy never reached me."

The others began waking one after another, and the cabin quickly filled with groans, relieved laughter, and an almost synchronized series of burps. One teenager announced that he felt energetic enough to run several miles, while another said the only thing he wanted was immediate access to a bathroom. A blond boy looked disturbed as he admitted, "I dreamed somebody kept holding me down and making me drink water all night."

Glen slowly turned toward him. "You too?" Several other teenagers exchanged uneasy looks before nodding, and their attention gradually shifted toward the quiet figure sitting in the corner.

Axel Vance was leaning against the wall and calmly drinking from another bottle. He lowered it after noticing everyone staring at him and said, "You were all getting attacked in your sleep, so I kept you alive." His expression remained completely serious, as though spending the night moving from one nightmare victim to another with cases of Holy Water was perfectly ordinary medical treatment.

Glen looked toward the mostly empty cases stacked against the wall. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and finally muttered, "Your version of saving lives is terrifying." Axel ignored the complaint because everyone in the room was alive, rested, and no longer being carved apart in their dreams.

The younger children soon woke as well, and most seemed healthier than the teenagers. A few immediately grabbed their blankets and hurried outside with suspiciously guilty expressions because the enormous amount of liquid they had consumed during the night had created predictable consequences. Axel pretended not to notice the damp bedding they were trying to hide and decided preserving their dignity was easier than asking questions.

Far away from the peaceful morning camp, the blood-red boiler room shook with rage. Freddy Krueger dragged the blades of his glove across a metal pipe again and again, throwing sparks while cursing everyone he had tried to torment the previous night. In all his years of feeding on fear, he could not remember another night that had been so completely humiliating.

Every dream he entered had felt wrong.

The children and teenagers should have been helpless once sleep took them, but instead an invisible pressure surrounded their souls. The closer Freddy moved, the more that strange force irritated him, and if he stayed too long it gathered enough strength to push him out. He had spent the entire night jumping from dream to dream and had barely managed to frighten anyone properly.

Then there was Lionel Cosgrove.

Freddy’s burned face twisted with disgust as he remembered the timid young man. Lionel had been even worse than the protected teenagers because every wound healed instantly, leaving Freddy with nothing but useless screams and a nauseating blue-green energy under the boy’s skin. Torturing him had felt like stabbing a rubber mannequin that somehow smelled rotten.

Freddy scratched the burned flesh beneath his fedora and paced through the boiler room. One person connected nearly every failure: the new forest ranger who had arrived at Crystal Lake with bottles carrying some kind of holy protection. Axel Vance was becoming a serious problem, and Freddy was not arrogant enough to assume walking directly into the man’s dream would automatically end well.

"Fine," Freddy muttered with a crooked grin. "If the new guy wants to play hero, let’s give him something to do while he’s awake." He knew exactly where Axel and the others were staying, and Crystal Lake already had a monster of its own.

A new idea formed in Freddy’s mind.

One threat in the dream world.

Another in reality.

If Axel spent his nights protecting sleepers while something unstoppable hunted through the woods during the day, even he would eventually make a mistake. Freddy’s grin widened as the boiler room filled with his laughter.

Near Crystal Lake, Rob Dier had spent most of the night leaning against a tree with his shotgun beside him. Talking to Axel the previous afternoon had brought every memory of Sandra back to the surface, and sleep had refused to come even after exhaustion made his eyes burn. He continued staring at the lake as though enough patience might finally force Jason Voorhees to reveal himself.

Morning light gradually spread across the water, and the steady movement of small ripples began making Rob’s eyelids heavy. Just as his head started to dip, a low mechanical buzzing reached him from somewhere beyond the trees. He immediately grabbed the shotgun and stood, alert again.

Rob followed the sound around part of the shoreline until he reached an abandoned maintenance building half-hidden by weeds. An old diesel generator sat outside coughing dark exhaust into the morning air, and several crude electrical cables had been pulled from its connection panel. The stripped ends disappeared directly into the lake.

Dead fish floated nearby with their pale bellies facing the sky.

Rob stared at the setup in disbelief. "Who the hell is stupid enough to run electricity into Crystal Lake?" He stepped toward the generator and reached for the controls, intending to shut the dangerous mess down before somebody got killed.

A cold sensation moved across the back of his neck.

Rob froze.

Every instinct told him something was standing behind him.

He slowly turned with the shotgun raised.

Nobody was there.

Rob exhaled shakily and told himself exhaustion was finally making him paranoid. He started to lower the weapon when the lake behind him suddenly erupted with violent movement.

The water churned as if something enormous were forcing its way upward from the bottom. Mud, weeds, and dead fish rolled across the surface while a dark shape emerged from beneath the water. Rob backed away one step at a time, unable to look anywhere else.

A huge man slowly rose from Crystal Lake.

Water poured from torn, rotting clothes stretched across a massive body. The figure’s face was hidden behind a weathered hockey mask marked by years of damage and old stains, and his silent posture carried more menace than any threat Rob had imagined. The search that had consumed years of Rob’s life suddenly ended with the realization that Sandra’s killer was no longer anything close to an ordinary man.

"Jason..." Rob whispered.

His hands began trembling.

Then anger overcame fear.

Rob raised the shotgun and fired.

The blast thundered across the lake and struck Jason Voorhees squarely in the torso. The shot tore several new holes through his decaying clothes but failed to make him take even half a step backward. Jason merely tilted his head slightly, almost as though the attack had confused him.

Rob stared in horror.

Jason ignored him.

The enormous killer walked past and entered the abandoned maintenance building. He moved through rusted equipment and discarded tools until his hand closed around an old machete with a stained, corroded blade.

Rob’s courage finally collapsed.

Everything Axel had warned him about returned at once.

Don’t chase danger alone.

Rob backed away while Jason slowly turned toward him with the machete hanging at his side. The moment their eyes seemed to meet through the hockey mask, Rob spun around and ran toward camp as fast as his legs could carry him.

Jason did not immediately follow.

He simply stood outside the ruined building and watched Rob disappear into the forest.

Back at the campsite, Glen sneezed and rubbed his still-distended stomach. He stared suspiciously at another bottle of Holy Water sitting on the table and said, "I swear I never want to drink water again." Nancy and the other teenagers nodded with complete agreement, although none of them were willing to throw away the bottles that had apparently kept Freddy out of their dreams.

Ethel came out of the main cabin carrying a plate of toast and shook her head at the exhausted group. "I told you people not to stay up doing stupid things all night. Look at all of you." Nobody bothered explaining that their stupid nighttime activity had involved being hunted by a burned dream murderer.

A distant gunshot suddenly cracked through the woods.

Ethel flinched hard enough that the plate nearly slipped from her hands. "What was that?" The children immediately stopped eating, and the teenagers turned toward the sound.

Axel was already standing.

His expression had changed completely.

The shot had come from the direction of Crystal Lake.

"Everybody stays here," Axel said. "Lock the cabin, keep the children inside, and don’t open the door for anyone until I come back."

Nancy stood quickly. "Where are you going? That was a gunshot."

Axel looked at her for a moment but gave no explanation. If Rob had found whatever he had been hunting near the lake, there was a very good chance Axel already knew the answer.

He walked to the Ford pickup and opened the equipment compartment. Axel took out his shotgun, ammunition, and the remaining cases of prepared Holy Water, then checked each item before closing the door. On his way past the chopping block, he stopped and looked at the axe buried in a piece of wood.

Axel pulled it free.

A shotgun for something that could still feel bullets.

Holy Water for anything that could not.

An axe because sometimes simple tools worked surprisingly well.

Without another word, Axel turned toward the trees and started running.

Within seconds, his figure vanished into the forest in the direction of Crystal Lake.

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